| MEASUREMENT PROPERTIES | |
| Limitations | >=5 European languages (English) |
| Observations |
It does not need a trancultural translation s it does not collect opinion but facts (signs). |
| 1. RELIABILITY | |
| A. Internal Consistency | Not Tested |
| Cronbach's (Describe) | |
| B. Reliability intraobserver or test-retest | Not Tested |
| Continuous scores: intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) Dichotomus: Cohen kappa (Describe) |
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| C. Reliability interobserver or Measurement error | Not Tested |
| Standard error of measurement (SEM), smallest detectable change (SDC) or Limits of agreement (LoA) (Describe) |
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| 2. VALIDITY | |
| A. Content validity: face validity | Tested |
| Expert opinion (relevance and comprehensiveness) (Describe) |
A panel identified 24 variables as important factors in a disease activity index. These were used to generate 574 patient profiles, which were rated on a disease activity scale of 0-10 by 14 rheumatologists. A second rating of 10 of the profiles yielded scores that were not significantly different from the first, indicating that experienced clinicians can reliably make global estimates of disease activity. |
| B. Construct Validity: Structural validity |
Tested |
| Hypotheses-testing | Not Tested |
| Cross-cultural validity | Not Tested |
| Brief Description |
Multiple regression models were used to estimate the relative importance of the 24 clinical variables in the physicians' global rating of disease activity. These were estimated on a "training set" of 75% of physicians' ratings, and then validated on a "testing set," consisting of the remaining 25% of physicians' ratings. The explanatory power of the models in the training set was high (R2 = 0.93). The models' regression coefficients for the organ systems were simplified for easier use in clinical practice. This generated a "weighted" index of 9 organ systems for disease activity in SLE, the SLEDAI, as follows: 8 for central nervous system and vascular, 4 for renal and musculoskeletal, 2 for serosal, dermal, immunologic, and 1 for constitutional and hematologic. |
| C. Criterion validity | Not Tested |
| Comparison with a 'gold standard' Continuous scores: correlations, ROC curves Dichotomus: Sensitivity & Specificity (Describe) |
The SLEDAI predicted well the physicians' ratings in the testing set (Pearson's correlation coefficients = 0.64-0.79) |